


Message in a Bottle

by thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Coma, F/M, Future Fic, Getting Together, Injury Recovery, Letters, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-15 05:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13606848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: When she woke up, the med droid said she'd slept for six years. The fighting was over, and Finn wasn't there.





	Message in a Bottle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



When she woke up, the med droid said she'd slept for six years. 

She remembers smiling tightly and wincing at the bright lights overhead, and wondering how her hair had gotten so long except, well, _six years_ , so she guessed that made some kind of sense. 

She remembers feeling kinda queasy as she tried to sit herself up though she only halfway managed it, and how there was someone over in the next bed watching her like she was a museum exhibit come to life, so she looked away again. 

She remembers someone said, "Hey, you know, the war's over now. We won!" 

And she just closed her eyes and lay back down. She didn't say, _I know_.

\---

The doctor told her the first couple of weeks would be the worst, but she was wrong. 

The first couple of weeks sped by in a haze of sleep - who knew she'd be so totally tired after a six-year coma? - and of her roommate's almost neverending chatter. They woke her up to eat mushy food with a spoon that she could barely lift, 'cause they weren't sure her insides were up to taking solids yet, but the rest of the time she just drifted off. 

She didn't have to think about how she'd missed the war, or at least not played a part in it the way she'd really thought she would. No: no matter what the doctor said, the first couple of weeks weren't hard at all. 

It got harder after, on a really steep curve. She tried not to think about all the things she knew that she couldn't possibly have known; she stomped them down while she learned to walk again 'cause even in a flashy med bay like the one she'd slept in all those years, they really hadn't been able to keep her in tip-top shape while unconscious. She had work to do to get better again. Sometimes that helped. Mostly it didn't.

It got harder after the first two weeks 'cause she wasn't alone but she felt alone, even with all the other people there, even with the doctors and the patients and the visitors and droids. Everyone else had someone and all she had was a crescent-shaped pendant that reminded her of her dead sister, and a scar the bacta tank couldn't quite heal up to reminder her of Finn. 

Her roommate kept trying to tell her _how_ they'd won the war as well as _that_ they had. He told her all about the battles their side had fought and all the things that Finn and Rey and Poe had done while she'd been lying there. But, the thing was: she knew. 

She figured maybe they'd left the HoloNet News playing while she'd been unconscious. The alternative was just way too weird to be true.

\---

While she was out, she wrote Finn letters. 

She wrote a bunch of them. She knew she was really only writing in her head, but it made sense to her somehow; she sat down at her old desk back home on Hays Minor, or in a quiet corridor on any Resistance ship she knew, or any of a thousand places that she dreamed up from nowhere in her mind, and she wrote to him. She wasn't sure she had a lot to say, but it felt like it helped.

She imagined the pen in her hand and the ink on the paper, the way it felt, the way it smelled, the way her handwriting hadn't gotten any neater since she and Paige were kids. She imagined telling him she was glad he was alive, and glad that she was, too, and how she hoped maybe she'd see him again one day. If they didn't die before that. 

She wrote him about growing up. She wrote him about her sister, about why the two of them had even joined up with the Resistance in the first place. She wrote him about the things she believed were true, like how he had it in him to be brave like his friends were, maybe even just _because_ his friends were, because that was how they'd all live through this: fighting for each other. Politicians had all their high values, but what the people like them had was love.

She wrote him every day, not expecting a response at all. And then, one day, in he walked. 

"Hey," he said. 

"Hey yourself," she replied. 

He frowned. She frowned. He put his hands on his hips. She crinkled her nose. He raised his head out of the shiny-panelled First Order pit they were sitting in and looked around. 

"Is this the bridge of the _Supremacy_?" he asked. 

She shrugged. "I guess?" she replied.

"It's...roomy."

"Well, I figured it would just be weird to imagine all the stormtroopers in it." 

"You're by yourself?"

"Well, and apparently there's you."

He eyed her. She eyed him. And then she took a breath and she picked up the box from its place on the desk and she handed it to him. 

"I guess I wrote these for you?" she said, like that was somehow a question. 

"For me?" 

"Well, I don't think I wrote them for General Hux," she said.

"You _are_ kinda in his ship, y'know." 

She glared. He shrugged. 

And then, he sat down and he read every one of her her forty-three letters. 

\---

He came back every couple of months. 

Sometimes he'd visit three days in a row and then he'd be gone again. Sometimes it'd be a quick twenty minutes then months of nothing. It was hard to predict so she stopped even trying to - she just wrote her letters and wondered why she couldn't just imagine him being there with her, but she guessed if she couldn't imagine her sister into being in her head then imagining him probably wouldn't work for her, either. 

He told her about the war. They won battles and they lost battles and he seemed pretty tired sometimes, worn out, worn down, but he was living - at least the Finn inside her head was. He told her about General Organa and how more and more people were coming to help, the General's old friends and new people, too, some how remembered the Empire and some who remembered the stories. He told her what he'd done, when she made him tell her - she was pretty sure he played his part down, so she filled in the blanks herself. She was pretty sure he was a hero.

He told her about the war, and about his life before it, at least what there was to tell. Sometimes they were back in the hangar on Crait. Sometimes they were in an escape pod ready to eject from the Raddus. Once or twice, they were sitting in a field of blue grass on a planet Rose wasn't sure she'd ever even been to; dumb as it was, she like to think maybe that was a place that Finn knew.

Four years in, she got up the nerve to kiss him again, like she had on Crait, except arguably less close to death or maybe closer to it. Then they lay back in the blue grass and the back of his hand brushed the back of hers. 

It didn't feel accidental. All she could do was smile.

\---

The first couple of weeks weren't the worst. 

The worst were the weeks that followed, her whole body feeling wrong while she learned how to be in it again, because she'd always just felt normal there inside her head while she was out. 

The worst was wondering how Finn and the others were doing but not quite finding a way how to ask, though sometimes Rey's face popped up on the news. There was a shot of her with her lightsaber that Rose had to admit was pretty inspiring. She was an icon of the rebellion. She guessed she could see why Finn liked her.

And then, one day, Finn walked into her room, and she tried not to think about six years of him meandering around inside her head. She tried not to think about letters. She tried not to think about two years watching imaginary stars through a made-up viewport with her hand in his. She tried not to think about the things she'd lost when she'd woken up.

"Hey," she said, as he lounged against the door frame, trying to look nonchalant. 

"Hey yourself," he replied, then he smiled sort of sheepishly. "Sorry I didn't come by sooner." 

"I guess you've been busy. You had a war to win." 

He shrugged. She frowned. She thought maybe it would've been easier if he just hadn't come at all, like she could've tried to move on, but then he crossed the room to her. He fished inside his inside jacket pocket. He put a creased-up envelope down on the tray table there in front of her and he tried to smooth it out, not that it worked at all. 

"I wrote you a letter," he said, and he let his fingers brush the back of hers. "I still remember all of yours."

\---

Apparently, the med droids had hooked Finn's brain up with hers while she was out. Apparently, it was meant to stimulate her synapses or something like that - she's always understood mechanics a whole lot better than she has biochemistry. Apparently, he was the only one her stubborn ass didn't kick right back out of there again. 

She remembered everything, and so did he. Honestly, he seemed just as relieved about that as she did.

They stayed with the Resistance after, though the Resistance became something else became something else again. Finn helped Rey track down what was left of the First Order. Rose fixed things. She helped rebuild things. They were both really good at what they did. 

They wrote each other letters. They read them out loud, in bed in their shared quarters, her back to his chest, his arm around her waist. They read them out loud with their fingers twined together, side by side. 

And when they found the field of long blue grass, they stayed there, together. There was no place in the galaxy that Rose would have rather been.

Maybe she'd lost six years, but what she figured what she'd gained was worth it.


End file.
